Generally, these novels follow the same pattern: an American man abroad, almost inevitably a veteran of WWII or Korea, involved in a high-stakes adventure involving international crime or sometimes very high-stakes politics (revolutions in South America and Africa are the most common). Sometimes, he's the criminal, sometimes he's trying to stop the criminal - but it doesn't really matter  because the result is the same, either way. The hero nearly always comes out on top, with his skin intact and usually with the girl and the loot, as well.

These novels, while entertaining in their way, are the macho equivalent of high-camp. Some of them are kind of ridiculous, actually. Every woman is stunning, every situation is deadly or sexy, every foe is impossible to overcome and yet the hero is always able to squeak by somehow.

The set-up fits the pattern to a T: man wrongfully convicted of a murder flees the US. With no money and no skills to fall back on besides his army sniper training, he agrees to assassinate a South American dictator for a group of revolutionaries. The difference is in how it's all handled. The main character is very detached at the beginning, thinking of it only as a means to get back to the US and clear his name (by using the money to hire the best lawyer he can find), but somewhere along the way he becomes more invested in this revolution than most of the revolutionaries and the insight into the way his mind changes is fascinating as it's quite subtle. The actual prose can be ponderous at times, but the story is unusual for the genre.

At any rate, after reading this, once again I thinking about this type of novel's pattern and its origins and it hit me immediately: almost an entire generation of American men went to war in Europe and Asia, in WWII and the Korean War, then came home, most settling down to marriage, families, jobs. But even years later, in the 50s and 60s, many were still relatively young (the average age of a US serviceman in WWII was 19, I've read), and probably, let's be frank, many were probably bored as so many of us are with our own monotonous lives today. 

But unlike many of us today, many of these men had literally deadly experiences in foreign countries, places that probably seemed both foreign and familiar after years away, and a certain nostalgia probably developed - a sort of what might have been. I'm sure that these characters in the novels I've mentioned, and likely thousands of other books, were intended to be a sort of every man for that generation - a "this could have been YOU, reader" kind of thing. Of course, these readers knew that wasn't so, and most probably wouldn't want it to be so, but it's always nice to dream of adventure, right? It's certainly a lot safer than living it.

Maybe I'm off base, but this makes a lot of sense to me

I've mentioned ​Doris Piserchia's A BILLION DAYS OF EARTH before, but I've been thinking about it a bit lately, so let's revisit.

I haven't said much about this manga publicly, but it's been one of my absolute favorites since it first appeared in 2013. I immediately fell in love with Gido Amagakure's SWEETNESS AND LIGHTNING because of it's poignant mix of heartbreak, humor and the love between a small, broken family and their close-knit group of friends.

Kouhei Inuzuka is a young high-school teacher whose wife passes far too early, leaving him alone with a four-year-old daughter, Tsumugi, who doesn't understand why any of this is happening. While Kouhei is a loving father, he's basically a fish out of water with his wife gone. His wife did all the cooking, cleaning and was a stay-at-home mom. Kouhei, his own heart just as broken as Tsumugi's, is left to take care of both his daughter and himself without really being prepared to do so. But he struggles along, doing the best he can, realizing quickly that one of the things both he and his daughter miss the most, besides his wife's presence of course, is the wonderful home-cooked meals she always provided. With the help of one of his students, Kotori (who is secretly in love with him), whose mother is a famous chef, but who is herself afraid of the kitchen, Kouhei, Tsumugi, Kotori and their small circle of friends learn how to cook together, while becoming a closely-knit family and healing both Kouhei and Tsumugi's hearts.

What makes this book a standout, though, rather than simply being another cooking manga or another single-father story, is that the sadness and heartbreak is never ignored, but it always, always, always focuses on the joy these people find together, whether it's individual small moments or long sequences of growth. Before long, they laugh more often than they cry and I'm not ashamed to admit that I both laughed and cried right along with them every step of the way. Whether the story is focusing on Kotori's estranged parents' attempts to rekindle their love or Kotori's barely-hidden love for Kouhei, Tsumugi's learning how to be friends with people when they need it the most (even if they don't seem to want to be friends just then), these characters truly grow and it's an exceptional joy to watch them them do so. 

With the exception of a few side-story time-jumps, the manga progresses in real-time as the characters grow, age and move on through the grades (in Tsumugi and Kotori's cases) and it really feels like watching real people grow and Amagukure does an amazing job both making that growth realistic and imbuing the work with the kinds of emotions these people are feeling. As I said, I both laughed and cried right alongside them.

Now, however, the series has ended, the final English-translated volume published this week and while I've been reading the series right along as it was published in Japan, I've been buying these translations, as well, and reading them as they come out here, because it's truly a series that deserves multiple reads and a spot on anyone's bookshelf.

So, thank you, Amagakure-san, for six wonderful years, and thank you Kouhei, Tsumugi, Kotori and all the rest for sharing your lives with us. I truly loved every step of the way.

I just wanted to take a minute here to remind everyone that my novel THIS ROUGH OLD WORLD was reissued by Ulthar Press and is available in both print and ebook formats and ask, if you've read it, that you please take a moment and leave a review on Amazon. It really helps more than you know.

Click here or the image below to be whisked away to the Amazon listing!

Los Angeles, 1968, a time of radical change - for everyone but part-time private-eye Tom Ahearn, who's stuck in a rut of routine and self-pity. When Charlie, a hippy of the lowest order, offers a quick buck for what seems like an easy job, Tom dives head-first into a world of casual sex, drugs, music and the occult. He'll find himself rubbing shoulders with drugged-up hippies, young Republicans itching for war and slumming socialites bent on nothing less than completely reshaping the cosmos - all while unknowingly witnessing the nascence of one of the twentieth century's most notorious evils.

As I just read the newest volume, let's revisit CHILDREN OF THE WHALES!

As you probably know, I'm a big noir guy, mostly prose, but certainly films are up my alley as well. We know where noir originated (in the pages of Black Mask magazine, if you can't recall), but where did film noir begin?

Many historians and critics claim this little gem, STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, is the very first true film noir.

Even if it wasn't historicall significant, this film deserves to be considered film royalty. Directed by Boris Ingster (his first film) and art-directed by Van Nest Polgase (also art directed on CITIZEN KANE), the film practically oozes atmosphere--that sweaty, desperate tension from which noir springs--and looks amazing while it does so.It also stars one of the greatest character actors of all time - Peter Lorre and he's at his creepiest here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit.

The plot is a classic set-up: reporter Micheal Ward gets the scoop of a lifetime when he happens upon a murder and becomes the key witness at the trial of the petty criminal, Joe Briggs, found at the scene standing over the body. Briggs claims he's innocent and claims that he found the victim already dying. Ward's testimony convicts Briggs, who is sentenced to the death

This turns out to be wonderful for Ward's career, but he soon has doubts (planted by his fiancee) as to whether Briggs really is the killer or just an unlucky bypasser as he claimed. When a similar murder occurs and Ward is again on the scene, he reports the crime - only to be accused by the police of being the killer himself.

The story is interesting and contains one of the most surreal, disturbing dream-sequences mid-century Hollywood ever devised. And, as I said, the film looks incredible and makes astounding use of light and shadow to create what would become the archetypal film noir look.

You can't help but be suspicious of a young Peter Lorre when he's lit that way. (I mean, he is the titular stranger, but still...)

And Ward's isolation as is palpable. 

It's a great film and even if you aren't a noir buff, it's something you should check out simply as an important piece of film history.

I stumbled on this quite accidentally and, honestly, wasn't expecting much, but I found myself enjoying it quite a bit.

As I said, I'd never heard of Edward S. Aarons or his CIA agent hero, Sam Durell, and the the above novel (third in the series), was one I obtained through a lot of random Gold Medal novels bought on eBay. Ostensibly, it's a series of Cold War spy novels, twenty-eight in all, written between 1956 and 1983, and I wasn't that eager to read it both because I'm not really a fan of spy fiction and because much of the stuff from the time period has a distinctly Flemingesque flavor (hey, it sold, right?).

ASSIGNMENT - STELLA MARNI surprised me, though, in that it's nothing at all like most spy novels I've encountered. In fact, it's more like ninety-percent mystery novel, ten-percent spy novel - and only that because it deals with Soviet-era spy rings and the "detective" is a CIA agent.

The mystery is decent one, though, a little thin once you get into the meat of the novel. Essentially, Iron Curtain refugees in the US are being blackmailed into decrying America as capitalist pig-dogs and repatriating themselves to their countries of origin. Frank Greenwald, a lonely, middle-aged bachelor, has fallen in love with one such refugee. His brother, Art, happens to be a member of the CIA, working under section chief Sam Durell, and he asks his boss for help. Shortly after, both Frank and Art are murdered and now it's personal for Sam.

It has all the hallmarks of a crime novel, with the crusading detective looking to right a wrong against a seemingly impossible to beat enemy, complete with fist-fights, occasional shooting matches, and sexy damsels in distress. Throughout it, though, there's a pervasively patriotic message as well as a humanitarian one. Sam Durell firmly believes that there is no such thing as American vs Soviet or Capitalist vs Communist on a human level, only people trying their best to live their lives in peace and safety. It's stated over and over in various ways and it's actually an unusual message for a novel of the time.

In the end, of course, the detective triumphs, as we knew he would, but he's also a changed person, which is another deviation from the standard formula. In many such works, especially series works, things sort of reset to normal at the end (or at least there's an implication that such will happen). In this, though, Durell is left with a feeling that things will never quite be the same again after the experiences he's had. He's encountered true evil for the first time and it has nothing to do with socio-economic politics. Whether that continues to be the case in subsequent novels, I don't yet know.

Nitty-gritty: did I love this novel? No, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and if I see more of Aarons' CIA detective hero, I'll definitely give them a shot.

This Saturday is FCBD and while I will not be doing any appearances, there are thirteen free comics right here on my website for you to enjoy!

Check 'em out right here or click the image below to be whisked away.

Enjoy!

Since I revisited PRIEST recently, I thought I'd revisit Min-Woo Hyung's other manhwa series, GHOSTFACE.

This one does not hold up so well.

Whereas PRIEST brought up a lot of interesting and heavy questions concerning religion, what it means to humanity and to individuals and whether beings as insignificant as humans can even have meaningful relationships with their gods, being one-sided as they necessarily are and mixed all of it with horror-action GHOSTFACE is your basic action-thriller.

Supposedly inspired by Hyung's being a fan of the American rapper Ghostface Killah, it revolves around a fictional island where, sometime in the first half of the 20th century, a group of criminals, after escaping from one of the world's most hardcore prisons, set up a sort of self-imposed exile colony, with the rest of the world's unspoken agreement to leave them alone so long as they never left. When other criminals around the world hear of this, they flock there, willingly giving up whatever freedom they might have had in the outside world for a chance to escape punishment for their crimes. The catch? No one can leave the island. Ever. They will be summarily executed by authorities from the outside world's various governments if they do and are noticed. Worse, if they leave and try to come back, their own people will kill them. The denizens of the island term people who have left "Ghostfaces" because, presumably, they are dead to the island's society. It kind of doesn't fit, does it? It's a rather clumsy use of a name that Hyung had almost certainly decided on using before coming up with the premise.

So nobody leaves and it isn't an issue. Until someone does: an unnamed denizen of the island shows up on the mainland, performs an incredibly daring robbery of a secret lab owned by one of the world's largest corporations and steals an experimental drug designed to make people into super-soldiers. They are unable to stop him, but manage to track him back to the island (initially the corporation doesn't know if he's escaping to the island or returning to it), sending a group of corporate commandos after him. Their goal is to retrieve or destroy the drug and make it back off the island without what passes for its authorities knowing they were there, as it would set off an international incident.

Of course, it doesn't work out as planned and they are almost immediately found out. The man who stole the drug has, of course, used it (all of it, apparently, the reader is sort of shown; we're left to assume he's used it all, anyway) on himself and become an insanely powerful being of unmatched fighting prowess, slaughtering most of the commando team - except for a lone, female survivor, who is rescued by the current king of the island (pictured on the cover above), a mysterious man who has animal-like powers of his own. Being as she needs to get back whatever remains of the drug and find out why it was stolen in the first place (was the criminal hired by a corporate rival? Did he somehow find out about the drug on his own? And if so, how?) and the king of the island must destroy this "ghostface" to preserve the island's traditions and his own place of power, they team up.

While a somewhat lengthy recap, it's a pretty basic set up when you get down it - and that's where the first volume (actually only two chapters of the comic; I believe the original Korean edition had four chapters) ends.

A few things:

First, this is in full-color, an opinion about which I'm undecided on. It took me a bit to get used to Hyung's art in PRIEST. From a technical standpoint, it's not especially good, but he has an amazing ability to use negative space to maximum effect and his artwork is some of the best I've ever seen at conveying motion. His artwork often seems as if it's moving on the page of its own accord. In color--which frankly, varied between not very good and excellent, as if it was done by multiple people (which it may have been, considering how manga and manhwa artists have stables of assistants)--much of that is lost. The color, when it's good, gives some new and interesting facets to the art that aren't present in Hyung's black and white art, but I almost think I would have preferred to see this strictly in black and white to make full use of Hyung's artistic strengths.

Second, the story is very, very thin. There's simply not much to start off with and Hyung makes little attempt to build on it. Granted, this first volume is only two 70ish-page chapters, but I just don't see how he could go much beyond the simple search, fight, chase and repeat scenario he's set up here.

Not that it even matters ultimately because...

Like PRIEST, it seems GHOSTFACE was never completed, going on hiatus after five volumes were published in Korea and never being resumed. Funny, since Hyung quit PRIEST (after 16 volumes, literally in the middle of freakin' fight scene) to do GHOSTFACE.

In PRIEST, Hyung showed that he's one of those creators who may not be at the highest point artistically but nevertheless has a knack for using his talents to maximum effect and putting together a hell of story. In GHOSTFACE, it really felt like he just had a cool title he wanted to use and his reputation allowed him to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I liked GHOSTFACE for what it was, but it's just not very much.

I do like being able to see a different side of Hyung as a creator. And I only paid $3 for the book so I feel I got my money's worth. If there was more available in English before the first volume, and I could find them cheaply, I think I'd probably read more of it, but I don't feel like I can recommend it to anyone unless they, too, can find it for dirt-cheap and fully prepared to read a story without an ending.

I've talked about PRIEST on the site before, but I recently re-read the series and felt like revisiting it here as I had some new thoughts. So, without further ado...